Sunday, June 24, 2012

Aaand the pile of unpainted models on my work desk continues to build up. Aside from 3 Warmachine armies, I now have to work on my newly acquired dust models.

I have got 1 of each unit currently available for this army, so let's take a look at them all:

Heavy Recon Grenadiers

Overall, the models look great. A lot of detail. Expressive faces, poses and cool looking weapons. They come assembled and primed, but the mold lines haven't been removed, so there is some work to do before start painting them, anyway.

One cool aspect of these models is that most minis come with pivoting torsos! That allows you to give them unique poses and further differentiate each model on the unit.

Axis Heroes

2 out of 3 axis heroes are zombies. What a benevolent, charming, thrust-inspiring empire this is...

Battle Grenadiers

The unit above comes with an additional panzerschreck (missile launcher, if you will...) so you can rearrange it to be a panzer killer unit, instead. I think I'm gonna need another of this anyway, as I may need to field both types of units on the same game.

Sniper Grenadiers

Beobatcher (Observer Squad)

Zombies

Now, I don't usually like zombies, but these guys I do like. Mainly due to their fluff. These are fallen axis soldiers, turned into undead warriors (!). Apparently, dying is no valid excuse to quit fighting for the 3° Reich!

Kommandotrupp

Recon Grenadiers

Laser Grenadiers

Gorillas

These guys, if I remember the rulebook correctly, were genetically engineered to have their intelligence increased, allowing them to follow orders from the axis commanders. Their hand weapons, similarly to those of the zombies, are fit for piercing tanks.

Heavy Kommandotrupp

Let's take a look on some comparison shots with Space Marines, to get a sense of scale here:

Don't really know if Dust is officially 30mm or 28, but they are significantly taller then GW models. The heavy troops are even taller, and kind of dwarfs the space marine terminator armor as well.

According to the pic bellow, in real life terms, the heavy armor would make the commander on the left about 20-30cm taller then the grenadier on the right.

The models are made of a plastic resin, much similar to that of Warmachine, and any bent pieces, like antennae and gun barrels, can be easily fixed with a quick blow from a hair-drier.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Lately, I've been working on my Warmachine armies. I already have a good number of Khadorans and Cygnarans.

I've done some converting on a couple of the Khador models I like the most. One of them is Karchev, the Terrible!

He's standing over the upper torso of a (obviously) dead cygnaran stormblade. I'll paint the soldier's waist all red, like blood, and also do some red on Karchev's axe, so to make it clear that he cut the enemy soldier in half with his huge weapon.

All heavy jacks from Khador were magnetized, allowing them to be placed on a variety of poses. I do the same with the larger jacks from Cygnar and Menoth, but the task is harder with them, as even their heavy jacks have somewhat skinny arms, and there is not much room for drilling and fitting big enough magnets to actually hold things together.

My devastator is one of the magnetized jacks that work really well:

Closed arms (huge armor value!)

Attack mode (not such huge armor value now, but still good)

My Behemoth is also magnetized and converted. It's crushing a cygnaran jack under its foot. The cygaran looks still functional (although having lost the right arm on the fight). The movement allowed to the behemoth's arms by the magnets makes the scene look amazing. I'm looking forward to have it painted.

The weather here has been terrible lately (for painting miniatures, that is, for oversleeping on weekends on the other hand...), so I only managed to finish priming my Carnivoran fleet yesterday. Now I have to get them painted before my Aquarian fleet arrives, and take the time between to get some Warmachine painted.

Here is what my armies look like so far:

Khador and some Menoth

Cygnar

(some jacks are not showing on the pic as they are in process of being magnetized)